My Batman
by anakinlove
Summary: Feeling a little edgy, Decided that I was gonna try and submit a Batman essay on a college application, maybe to one of the minor colleges I don't really want to go to. Anyway, here's a prospective one I might end up entering. Any one who's interested can read. My sis thought it was entertaining.


Batman has never been featured in a great classic. He has never been the subject of a prestigious play. Though movies have been made about him, his have never taken a place among the great films of history. The reasoning behind this is actually quite simple. Batman is not an Oliver Twist or a Romeo because that was not what he was created for.

Batman was created for entertainment. Bob Kane created Batman in 1939 because Detective Comics wanted an exciting superhero type character like Action Comic's Superman. He was born because pulp fiction demanded he be. But, he has become so much more than what Bob Kane ever dreamed he could be.

Comic book characters give us unique insight into ourselves because they are, for all intent and purposes, recreated for each new generation. The Batman my parents grew up with is not the Batman I grew up with. Superheroes are a social commentary in the making, a grand story about a developing nation captured in the essence of one immortal character who ages about as slowly as we all wish we would.

Batman should be about ninety by now if, assuming he was twenty when the first comic came out and it has been seventy years since then yet the comics now tell us he is nowhere near that age. He is caught forever in the prime of his life, living eternally in the years so many wish they could reach and equally as many wish they could have back.

Batman is the history of a nation and, looking at his story, we can learn where we came from and possibly even where we are going. He can never be a fantastically celebrated literary achievement because his story is never done.

Each of us, however, has his or her own picture of the Dark Knight, a tiny window into our souls. My personal favorite is Batman as a father. He raised four sons, though many chose to ignore this fact in favor of a still darker dark knight. Of course, it wasn't enough that he could be their father, those four Robin's he raised up (technically he did not really raise Stephanie Brown), no he had to also be, at least to a certain extent mine.

So, I made him perfect. And then, I made him real. I tailored him, creating mannerisms and ideas, favorite things and darkest fantasies, grooming and redefining until he was not the Batman I read about in the monthly comic books, but my own version, a pair of rose tinted glasses I slipped on when I read what the writers put out for me, pondering his actions and subtly shifting his reasoning behind them until he fit into the mold of "my Batman" who had swiftly become, to me, "the Batman".

If I absolutely could not reconcile something Batman did in the comics, he fell into the category of not being "the Batman". Of course, others did the same. No two Batmen are exactly alike. He is elastic in his perfection, fitting our needs in ways book characters never can.

He gives to us what we always crave from our most favorite novel, a lasting relationship that will survive even after the pages of the monthly comic book or the graphic novel picked up on a whim are closed. When I pick up something written about Batman, it whispers to me a promise that, even when it is finished, my fantasies can continue to cavort, mold and redefine everything that he is until I pick up the next one and the process can begin anew.

Batman is my character. He does not belong to Bob Kane or even DC comics, whatever trademarks and restrictions they put on his usage. My Batman belongs to me. My sister's Batman belongs to her. My best friend's Batman belongs to him. Batman is an every changing commentary on a nation and on a soul, a secret story of a million people and just one. He may not be on a pedestal with Moby Dick or Tom Sawyer, but perhaps it is better this way. Tom Sawyer is Mark Twain's. Batman is mine.


End file.
